RAISING THE BAR

West Bengal's first trans woman advocate SAYANTANI GHOSH speaks to Kayal Arivalan about creating her own path to success

- By Kayal Arivalan

In the quiet corridors of the Calcutta High Court, Sayantani Ghosh is redefining the norms on gender barriers. Growing up in a conservative family in the 1990s, her early life as a little boy was marked by confusion and ridicule. She instinctively identified as a girl but lacked the language or support to articulate it. "As a child, I was very shy; my birth gender was male and my psychological gender was female," she recalls. Applying her mother's kajal, draping a sari, or practising Bharatanatyam became silent acts of defiance in a world that refused to understand her. Teachers and peers mocked her, her father was openly hostile. "My eyes were always filled with tears, I feared my schoolmates but I never told my parents my feelings," she says.